Do you chat here often? How online meetups are changing marriage

"The Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriages itself," according a new study that found that a third of recently-married couples met online, and that couples who met online were more likely to be in happy, stable relationships.

Surveying 19,000 U.S. couples who married between 2005 and 2012, University of Chicago researchers learned that 35 percent of them met online. The next most likely place where spouses met was work -- at only 21.6 percent of offline dating locations and 14 percent of all locations.

Among offline meeting locations, spouses reported that the next most common ones were meeting through friends, at school, at a social gathering, through family, or at a bar or club.

Among online meeting locations, social networking sites such as Facebook and online dating sites such as eHarmony were most frequently used. The couples who met online tended to be middle-aged and make higher incomes, according to the study published this week in PNAS, a scientific journal.

More than 100 surveyed couples met on email and another 100 or so met due to comment's they posted on blog sites. (I can just see it, "janedog1345, your comments on Gov. Dayton's budget were so romantic. Let's meet for coffee!) And more than 200 met through multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft. ("Ah, Witchkiller849, the way you slayed that dragon was so wicked. How about dinner sometime?")

I joke, but the big finding from the study is that online meetups are more likely to produce happy, durable marriages. The rate of divorce or separation was slightly lower among the couples who met online (6 percent) versus those who met offline (7.7 percent).

The folks at eHarmony are probably doing cartwheels over this study, which showed it was the most frequently used of online dating sites and also produced one of the highest rates of marital satisfaction -- online or offline. Marital satisfaction rates were slightly lower among couples who met offline through blind dates, work or bars and slightly higher among couples who grew up together or met at social gatherings or places of worship.

Newer Post

Jeremy Olson writes about children and families, and is an overscheduled father of two. His blog tackles the best and worst of parenting, families, health and love. He wants to hear from you - what's going on in your house?

Evan Hromada will never know for sure what life would have been like had his metabolic condition not been detected shortly after birth. The 18-year-old from Edina is simply grateful that he'll never to know thanks to the newborn blood screening that identified the condition when he was only three days old.

After a 3-year run, the Daddy-O blog is winding down as I move from the children and families beat at the Star Tribune to the health and medicine beat. Thanks to readers for all of their ideas and comments that kept this blog cruising! As part of the transition, I am once again sorting through the massive pile of parenting self-help books that come my way.

I'll admit, in all of my efforts to ignore the Royal Baby hoopla, I did notice a picture of the young prince in his car seat and thought, "Gee, doesn't the strap on that car seat look a little loose?!" I passed it off as either a British thing, or the faded memory of a dad whose kids are a decade removed from infant car seats.